Re: Which code style do you prefer the most?

On 2/27/25 8:18 PM, bart wrote:

On 27/02/2025 12:56, Ar Rakin wrote:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:
>

// isn't devoid of quirks (this is still C after all), for example:
>
    fopen(file,"rb");   // open file in \windows\system32\
    fread(...);
>
Here, the // line continues onto the next, so that the fread is
commented out. But they are fewer.

>
Interesting. Isn't this considered a compiler bug?

 It's to do with how C is defined, which requires that its implementation corresponds to series of phases.
 Then line-splicing, which combines two lines if the first ends with \, is done before processing // comments.
   I am aware that you

can do the same thing with strings like this:
>
fprintf(stderr, "multi\
line\
strings\
are fun.");
>
I can understand how this might be useful; but with *comments*?? Was
that actually a thing in the official C standards?

 It's isn't that useful for strings; the following is simpler and also works:
    "multi"
   "line"
   "string"
 But it is needed for multi-line macros, as C's proprocessor is strictly line-oriented and a macro definition must fit onto one line.
 So lines spliced with \ can be used to combine multiple lines into one. A side-effect is that you can't use // comments for individual lines of a multi-line macro, it would screw things up.
 

To me it just feels like a compiler bug that was never fixed.

 To me the whole of C feels like one huge language bug!
 The way line splicing works has even weirder repercussions; any token can be split across lines:
 i\
n\
t abc;      // split 'int' across 3 lines
 /\
/ This is a '//' comment with // split across two lines
 /\
* This is a /* ... comment */
 "ABC\
nDEF"      // A split string escape code
 if (a =\
= b) ...
 In fact, any C source file can be written with one character per line, plus the \ line continuation.
 

This is so weird LMAO, good to know though.  But still, I will continue to love C and will still write more C code :-)
--
Rakin